December 9, 1997 6:00pm, Florida Hospital

Speaker: Dr. Neil J. Finkler, M.D.

Gynecologic Oncology Cancer Specialist

Walt Disney Memorial Cancer Institute

Florida Hospital

Assistant Professor of Gynecology at Harvard Medical School

Division Director of Gynecologic Oncology at Boston University Medical Center

I treated Yoko Tominaga three years ago. She had advanced cancer. She was operated on and we gave her some chemotherapy. It was about two years later, a year ago, when I was checking some of Yoko's liver enzymes. I saw that some of the enzymes were going up, and some other things were happening. Yoko confessed to me that she had been doing other things. I said " Yoko, this is really very interesting because you had a cancer and you are well beyond what the normal survival is, but you have no evidence of the disease. I've scanned you six times and all your tumor markers are normal. I never understood? What happened?" Yoko then told me her confession that she had been doing some alternative therapies.

She's been taking some herbs, and in addition she's been doing Qigong. I said, what? And of course, I've never heard of this before. The subject was dropped for a while. One day, Tomi (Yoko husband) called and said he had a very dear friend in Japan, who had lung cancer. The doctors have given up; there's nothing they can do. He wanted me to recommend someone she could see. I gave him the name of a medical oncologist to see for her lung cancer. She eventually got intra-bronchial radiation through the windpipe, and she had radiation in the lungs. I spoke with the radiation therapist and medical oncologist. They both told me that we were talking about days at best. They also told me there was no way of her eating again, that her tumor was pressing against her esophagus and she'd be lucky if she could get a sip in. And it has been 6-8 weeks before I saw Yoko back in the office, and she said you know, it's an amazing thing not only is she alive but she has no pain, which was a big component. She was eating, breathing, and she was feeling a lot better." Well, I'm a big skeptic. And one day, Tomi asked me if I would like to see one of these Qigong therapies. I had to see what this Qi Gong therapy was all about. So, I went down to Tomi's house and actually witnessed a treatment for this patient with lung cancer, end stage, which conventional medicine had given up on. I brought my wife with me, and that was the first time I ever actually met Master Wu. As we sat in that room, certain things were happening. After we left Tomi's house, my wife looked at me and said got so cold in that room. It was freezing! When we first walked in to that room, it was really very warm." My wife said that she saw the thermostat on the wall and nobody was touching it. On subsequent visit, Master Wu explained to me what happened in the room and the principles behind all that. After a few more visits, we decided we were going to embark on a little trial. The trial was going to be on patients of mine, that I know that conventional medicine really had nothing more to offer. 

Several things became very apparent about Qigong therapy. One, it certainly doesn't hurt anybody. And probably the easiest thing for Qigong to do is to take pain away. One of my patients, a woman in her 30's or 40's with end stage cervical cancer, and she had severe, severe pain. She came in with kidney failure. She had failed radiation therapy and chemotherapy. We decided we weren't going to perform any more therapies. I spoke to the family and said I had nothing more to offer. I also asked if they would like to have Master Wu come. We talked a bit and surely Master Wu came. The patient was bed-ridden for days and was on high doses of morphine for pain relief by IV. About an hour after the first treatment, I received a call from the nurse. The nurse said the patient wanted her pain medication decreased because she was not having any pain. I said sure.  In the morning when I visited the patient who was on pain medication for weeks, she was now completely off morphine. From that point on, she was completely off morphine. She started to drink, eat, and asked to get out of the bed. Her kidney problem also started to turn around. It started making urine. Of the group of patients that we have looked at, there is no question in my mind that Master Wu treatment has led to a prolongation of quality life, as these people lived a much longer that I had ever expected. And they lived a life that is pain free. I am very interested in Qigong therapy and, as you may know about, the National Cancer Institute is also very interested and now has a branch for the investigation of alternative medicine and therapies. 

There are really a lot of alternative treatments that are fake, hocus-pocus, and money making opportunities that only take advantage of people, and they do absolutely nothing. But there's no doubt in my mind that Master Wu is of the utmost sincerity in what he does.